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The groundwork of the establishment of the future Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty (SEANWFZ) was started on November 27, 1971, when the 5 original members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and signed the declaration on ASEAN's Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN). One of the targets of ASEAN was also the establishment of SEANWFZ.

However, due to the political atmosphere at that time, including rivalries among the members and conflicts in the region and the Cold War, it was less feasible then to establish SEANWFZ. Thus the formal proposal for establishing a nuclear-free region was delayed until the 1990s, after the Cold War ended and conflicts were settled, and the member states renewed the denuclearization efforts. After conducting negotiations and finalizing the treaty for SEANWFZ by an ASEAN working group, the SEANWFZ treaty finally signed by the heads of government from 10 ASEAN member states in Bangkok on December 15, 1995. The treaty took effect on 28 March 1997[1] after all but one of the member states have ratified it. It became fully effective on 21 June 2001, after the Philippines ratified it, effectively banning all nuclear weapons in the region. In 2014 at the Meeting of the Commission for the Treaty on the SEANWFZ, the Ministers reviewed the progress on the implementation of the 2013-2017 Plan of Action to Strengthen the SEANWFZ Treaty, while reaffirming their commitment to preserve Southeast Asia as a Nuclear-Weapon Free Zone.[2]

The SEANWFZ treaty has a protocol that is open to signature by the five recognized nuclear-weapon states: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The protocol commits those states not to contribute to any violation of the treaty and not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons within the zone.[4]

As of April 2015, none of the five has signed the SEANWFZ protocol,[5] but in November 2011 they agreed with ASEAN states on steps that would enable them to do so.[6]